Pedro Gómez-Egaña: The Great Learning

In Spring 2025, the List Visual Arts Center will present the first US solo exhibition of Pedro Gómez-Egaña. 

Working in sculpture, performance, video, and drawing, Gómez-Egaña draws on practices of composition and choreography to create dynamic constellations of objects and events in time. His wide-ranging installations are arenas of motion and observation that also mine historical intersections of technology and the occult, the affective qualities of objects and spaces, and shifting economies of attention in contemporary society. In Virgo (2022), for example, 28 modular walls create set-like reproductions of various domestic interiors, some of which repeat throughout the large-scale installation, which taunts viewers with uncanny mise en abyme viewpoints. The work’s many walls are cut through on a diagonal that forms a path for visitors to move through its recursive architecture, bisecting some of the objects within the domestic scene; performers activate the work by pushing and pulling metal frames (and attached furniture) through precise gaps in the walls. Drawing on features of both architecture and dramaturgy, Gómez-Egaña layers modes of spatial and temporal dislocation and moments of intimacy and alienation to expose the porous and unstable conditions of contemporary life. 

Pedro Gómez-Egaña’s exhibition is organized by Natalie Bell, Curator.

Pedro Gómez-Egaña (b. 1976, Bucaramanga, Colombia) lives and works in Oslo, Norway where he is professor of sculpture and installation at the Oslo National Academy of The Arts. He holds an MFA and PhD in Visual Arts from the Bergen National Academy of Arts and a BA from Goldsmiths College, London, where he studied performance and music composition. Recent institutional solo exhibitions include Podium, Oslo (2023); KODE Museum, Bergen, Norway (2021); Munch Museum, Oslo (2019); Yarat Contemporary Art Space, Baku, Azerbaijan (2018); Entrée, Bergen (2017); Prosjektrom Normanns, Stavanger, Norway, and Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen (2015). He has also exhibited at: the 16th Lyon Biennial (2022); MAMBO, Bogota (2021); Henie Onstand Art Centre, Oslo (2021); TENT Rotterdam (2018); the Contour Biennial, Mechelen, Belgium (2017); the 15th Istanbul Biennial (2017); and Palais de Tokyo (2017); Kochi-Muziris Biennial (2016); and Performa 13 Biennial (2013); among many others.